However, many of you might not be aware of what your strengths actually are. To find them, you could ask a close friend or family member to observe you closely for a day or two to determine exactly when you are most engaged and energized. Why?

Because when you engage in an activity that you’re truly exceptional at, your excitement is clearly visible to those around you. And it, therefore, becomes very clear to others that you feel alive and motivated whenever you perform that particular activity. You might also like to try noticing what you do differently from other people.

Catching yourself in a random situation where your behavior might stand out will highlight your strengths. So once you find your strengths, make a conscious effort to remember them. They will serve you well in times of darkness.

“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”

– Joshua J. Marine

According to the challenge-hindrance stressor framework formed by Cavenaugh et al. (2000), you’d be better served to employ this type of approach. When confronted with a problem, most people look at it as an attack on them. As something that prevents them from moving forward. Something that has happened to them rather than for them.

This victim mentality hinders their progress, and thus weakens their sense of resilience. For example, upon receiving criticism by their boss, a victim may talk back to their boss in anger, attempt to deny or excuse the outcome of their work or perhaps even complain about it to their colleagues.

Embodying this type of
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simply sets you up for failure. You continue to receive curveballslike this and rather than face them head on, you crumble. Instead, you should learn to perceive such obstacles as challenges.

mindset

People with a challenge perspective strive to view the problem as an opportunity for growth; as a chance to better themselves. In contrast to a hindrance perspective, a challenge perspective allows you to see your problem as something that has happened for you rather than to you.

Figure 1.
Conceptual diagram of Disturbance Distance (). Given unique environmental growing conditions, forests tolerance to disturbance ( -axis) varies from low in areas with poor growing conditions (site-1 and 2) to high in areas with favorable growing conditions (site-3 and 4). At the same time forests sites vary in the actual rates of disturbance experienced () from relatively lower rates of disturbance (sites 1 and 4) to higher rates (sites 2 and 3). Subtracting actual rates of disturbance from an ecosystems threshold rate gives an indication of the additional amount of disturbance a forest can tolerate () before a transition to non-forest occurs.

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While field studies that characterize and/or simulate the impact of disturbance continue to be vital to our understanding of changing disturbance impacts to forested ecosystems, it is difficult and often impractical to extend these studies to continental and centennial scales [
14
,
15
]. Thus, process-based prognostic models that can simulate events over larger areas and temporal scales have been used to advance our understanding of regional to global ecosystem dynamics. Previous studies have explored a range of topics such as the modification of global vegetation in a world without fire, to the potential impacts of large-scale deforestation in Tropical and Boreal regions, to the dependence of future climate mitigation stategies on the future rate of natural disturbance rates [
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,
16
–
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].

Given the critical roles disturbance plays in shaping forest structure, function, and dynamics, we propose a framework to assess ecosystem vulnerability to disturbances. Specifically, we sought to address the following questions: (1) What is the maximum rate of disturbance for which current forests can be maintained across the US?; (2) How close are current forests to a fundamental shift in ecosystem structure?; and, (3) How may forest ecosystem sensitivity to disturbance change under a potential future climate change scenario?

Forest vulnerability to disturbance was determined by developing a simple and flexible framework. First, ecosystem responses to disturbance are evaluated under representative climatic and environmental conditions to determine threshold rates of disturbance (
λ
⁎
), the rates that lead to fundamental alterations of vegetation structure (i.e. transition from forest to non-forest based on criteria of plant structure, composition and biomass). While forests with favorable growing conditions recover faster and can thus tolerate higher disturbance, the same level of disturbance on a site with poor growing conditions can be enough to tip the land into a different ecosystem type [
19
]. Next, estimates of actual forest disturbance rates (
λ
) are acquired over forested regions. Comparing these observed rates of disturbance to the estimated threshold rates provide estimates of how much additional disturbance an ecosystem may tolerate before a transition threshold is reached, herein termed Disturbance Distance (equation (
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))

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